Patients suffering from chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases, should continuously or periodically be monitored by medical specialists to stave off danger of death. Needless to say, reaction time to cardiovascular changes of cardiac patients is a very important, and, even, determinant, factor in effective prevention of fatal attack.
There is a great variety of systems having a common goal of immediately detecting danger of health conditions of a patient and notifying a clinician without any action on the part of the patient. Such a system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,821, which relates to a home medical system and a medical apparatus for use therewith by which a patient having a disease or a healthy person can measure the daily condition of the disease, or the condition of health, at home. The system thus enables the patient to check certain physiological parameters, such as blood pressure and pulse, by following on-line instructions coming from a medical specialist at central medical station site.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,544,661 discloses a portable device attached to a patient and a central monitoring station. The portable device typically provides access to one or more physiological parameters of the patient and transmits them to a clinician at the central monitoring station, when emergency attention is required. The clinician has both voice contact with the patient and access to interventional therapeutic devices attached to the patient.
Hence, in both of the above examples, continuous direct interaction between the patient and the clinician is required during the monitoring process. However, it is often the case that an individual, either suffering from disease, in particular heart disease, or not, needs to check his health condition. If it appears that the individual is sufficiently well and does not need emergency assistance, communication with a clinician at a central monitoring station is clearly unnecessary. On the other hand, if either a dangerous situation really occurs, or the individual himself feels need for assistance, immediate contact with medical specialists must be made.